Hacker Cinema
The Review
2016 · Film · documentary · 15 min
Directed by Wilma Smith
In the Suburbs of a Scottish Town, the life of a family quietly revolves around one of their sons’ passion for football. 13 year old Darren plays youth football for a professional club but his annual ‘Review Night’ is approaching and the family are uncertain if he will remain signed. Mum, Yvonne, struggles with her son’s future and the impact that it will have on her family’s ritual of supporting him play every Sunday, their time, energy and countless hours standing in rain, snow and sunshine, and beyond. A beautiful and funny portrait between a mother and her teenage son.
1 positivefrom 1 commenter
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
1 comment on Hacker News
I'm of the opinion that most of the "dark, gritty" stuff we keep seeing in media just boils down to standard trend-chasing and market pressures to continue to use existing IPs. The cheesy, feel-good stuff from the 60s has already been done, so the darker stuff, especially when it's a darker take on those same characters, is still somewhat subversive to most viewers. When artists can't get real novelty, subversiveness is at least still generally respectable. Eventually, as the audience gets tired of this and it gets done to death, it will shift. Maybe not to the happy-go-lucky stuff, but I think surreal and absurdist humor is still fertile ground (see shows like: Nathan For You, The Review, Informercials, Corporate, American Vandal), and could be another future avenue for continuing to exploit existing IPs.
As for the general happiness of the population decreasing, I think that's mostly unrelated to the media trend. Economic troubles (low wages, housing unaffordability), societal strife, and social media all seem like obvious causes. However, Movies and TV are still generally viewed as an escape to most people, so while they reflect greater trends to some degree, I don't think they're as tied to it as the author may expect.